Thursday, December 19, 2013

by Jeff HowellIt’s true. Recruiters from both private businesses and recruiting agencies scour LinkedIn all the time to find business professionals passively or actively seeking work. Job boards like Monster and Career Builder are great, but what you may not know is that many high end recruiters use LinkedIn to find the best of the best. The job boards are sometimes full of actively seeking candidates which can be a little overwhelming to some recruiters. LinkedIn allows a recruiter to work at the pace of their open orders and take their time to find the candidates they are looking for.I won’t get into how they use it just yet, but I want to share some tips on how to get your LinkedIn profile noticed by recruiters:Use a keyword strategy.Promote yourself!Be active!Read the complete SteamFeed article for more tips and how to implement those tips

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Let’s get one thing straight. If you are in business, you need to be on LinkedIn. This is also true if you want to be in business. Meaning, if you are in school… now is the PERFECT time to get started on LinkedIn.No matter where you are in your career, NOW is the time to spend some time ensuring your LinkedIn profile perfectly describes you, your goals, your accomplishments and what you bring to the table.Your goal should be to help the reader decide:Do I want to do business with this person?There should be no debate about this point. Your career may depend upon it.There is nothing wrong with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ or any other social networks. It’s just that LinkedIn is the place to be for business.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

By Gerry MoranKeeping your LinkedIn profile active is a lot like keeping a baseball glove worn-in and ready to use. When I was growing up playing baseball, my dad always told me to oil up my glove and use it regularly. Otherwise, it would get stiff and make it hard to catch fly balls and grounders. Catching these fly balls and grounders would be critical in a game to maintain the favor and friendship of my teammates! Little did I know my dad was teaching me a LinkedIn lesson in the 1970′s!An active LinkedIn profile is similar to that glove. If you don’t keep it active, then you will not be regularly connecting with your network, and, therefore, might fall out of favor of your constituency!Here are 5 easy ways to keep your LinkedIn profile “oiled” up to you can catch all of your opportunities!

5 Ways To Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Active And Relevant

Update your LinkedIn status once or twice daily; once at the beginning of the day and another at the end of the day. Factbrowser reports that 77% of LinkedIn members use the site to research people and companies, 69% to reconnect with past business associates and 50% to build new networks, so regular updates will help you get found! If it sounds like this scheduling and updating is a lot of work, it’s not. Use a tool like HootSuite to schedule your twice-daily updates from curated sources, like the Wall Street Journal or MarketingThink.com. This tool makes it easier to plan your communication strategy from the comfort of your couch! (No … two daily updates are not too much. No one has EVER complained about my volume of updates!)

Participate in 3-5 key LinkedIn groups 2-3 times a week.LinkedIn reports hosting 1.5 million groups, however, you can only join 50 of them. Even with 50 groups to join, you will never be able to activity engage in all of them. So, pick the most relevant ones and maintain a contributing and consultative presence. Your contribution formula should be 10 consultative posts for every 1 “sales-ish” post. Participating in 3-5 LinkedIn groups can get hectic, too. You don’t have to log into LinkedIn every time you check on a group since you can use tools like Flipboard and HootSuite to check the activity.

Own the conversation in 1 key LinkedIn group. It’s easy to commit to trying to be an expert, thought leader, or active participant in one group; hopefully one that is thriving and full of other great contacts and potential business for you. Active participation in a group like this will increase the likelihood a growing LinkedIn network, and we all know that a bigger network is a better network!

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Contributor William Arruda gave Forbes readers good reasons last week to give LinkedIn a much more serious look in 2014.

Now that Arruda has covered the “why” of updating your profile, I’d like to take a closer look at the “how.” So I’ve reconnected with Wayne Breitbarth, the LinkedIn consultant and author behind the LinkedIn user research in the Forbes Most Read article I presented last month.

Whether you’re a power user or a casual LinkedIn participant so far, here are the 14 straightforward things Wayne suggested to me that are within the reach of every one of us as we bring the current business year to a close. Practice the ongoing steps and by the time the New Year arrives, you can have them committed to a habit you can conduct in just 10 minutes a day, if possible. But even 1-2 times a week could put you well ahead of the typical curve.

Here are the 14 steps he suggests you take right away:

1.Updateyour photo. Your picture should be recent, professional, and recognizable. An extra tip from Contributor Ken Krogue: Make the photo black and white—since the majority of the photos are in color, the black and white choice will help to set you apart from the crowd.

2.Crafta killer Headline. These are the most important 120 characters on your profile and should include your most important keywords and a short version of your branding story or elevator speech.

3.Revisityour Summary. Think of a tone and style akin to having a cup of coffee with the people who visit your profile. Your description should make them want to pursue a lasting business relationship with you. Would you want to know the person you see in your description, or do you sound entirely self-focused? Now’s the time to give it a bit of thought.

4.Inserta call to action in your profile. Don’t assume readers of your profile know what to do next to find out more about you and your products or services. Be specific and share a link or document that will help them move another step closer to a meeting, phone call, or request to connect on LinkedIn.

5.Join50 groups. Well, consider at least joining 10. With more than 1.8 million to choose from, you have the opportunity to increase your relevancy, find new people to join your network, and send direct messages to thousands of people who are not in your direct network. To avoid “email overload,” adjust each group’s contact settings to your liking.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

1) Claim your vanity URL.

Make your profile look more professional and easier to share by claiming your LinkedIn vanity URL. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, it will look nice and clean like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelavaughan. Do so by going here and clicking "customize your public profile URL" down on the right-hand side.

2) Create a profile badge for your personal website.

If you have your own personal website or blog, you can promote your personal LinkedIn presence and help grow your professional network by adding a Profile Badge that links to your public LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has a few different badge designs to select from, and you can configure your own here.

3) Make your blog/website links sexier.

Instead of using the default "My Website"-type anchor text links in your LinkedIn profile, you can change the anchor text to make those links more appealing to people who view your profile. So if you want to increase clicks on the website links you can display on your profile, change the link's anchor text to something more attention-grabbing than the standard options LinkedIn provides. For example, if you want to include a link to your blog, rather than choosing LinkedIn's standard "Blog" anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your blog is about, like "Internet Marketing Blog." Each profile can display up to 3 website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking edit on your website links, and selecting "Other" in the drop-down menu to customize the anchor text.Tips 4,5, and the complete article

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

At the recent New Start Scotland Exhibition event, as part of the NSDesign social media suite of workshops, I was asked to present something. I chose the ten-year old platform of LinkedIn as my subject. Since several people asked for a copy of the “slides” after it, I thought I’d create a blog post instead.

I started off with some background comments, and by recommending that people turn off their notifications BEFORE embarking on any tweaking of their profiles. Then asked people what their actual “GOAL” is for social media. Like every other platform out there, LI works best when you have a strategy in place. You need measurable goals that you’re actually working toward or what’s the point in being on there?

What I presented was both a matter of opinion (my own opinion of course), and a variety of “best practices” too. I probably read an average of one LinkedIn article a day. I added a disclaimer that basically said that I wasn’t claiming my profile was “the best profile ever” – to be honest, it’s a constant work in progress. As I learn more, I adjust it.

Here we go!

1) A profile picture (minimum 200×200; max 500×500). Ensure it’s not left blank, or a logo in its place. It shouldn’t be a “selfie” from a night out with your pals, or one with your spouse or kids. Make it a professional studio “headshot” if at all possible. People want to see who they’re dealing with. Put your best foot forward. Profiles with pictures are said to be viewed seven times more often than ones that don’t have a profile picture. Get the picture!? (Pun intended).

2) Make a Headline that Shines (120 characters). If you don’t change it, your headline will simply be your current job title. Why not change it to include relevant keywords for search engine optimization? Google and LinkedIn seem to share a good symbiotic relationship. So if you do it right, by that I mean choosing the right words, you just may find that you can rank on page one in Google by changing your headline to reflect the right terms. Try to show the benefit of connecting to you to your potential (and current) contacts.

3) Succinct Summary (2000 max characters). To me, this isn’t the place to write your full life story or bullet point your full career, but perhaps an opportunity to show who you are in a more rounded sense. Give the reader a little insight into who you are – not just what you DO. Be authentic, use keywords, show some personality, and don’t forget some sort of call to action at the end of it.

4) URLS (30 characters). There are two areas in your profile that you should take advantage of:

A.Your customized URL (usually this is your name). Your URL is found right below your photo on LinkedIn. (See right). Click edit and make it meaningful!

Thankfully, for me, there is only one Thea Newcomb! (Accept no substitutes).

B. Anchor Text/ Back Links The other areas you want to claim are your various website links. These are in the “contact info” area of your profile, and they’ll say things like “Company Website” or “Personal Website”. You can choose from Blog, Company Website, Portfolio, etc.

If you choose “Other” you can then tell people what the name of the site is. Like everywhere else on your LinkedIn profile, use those relevant keywords! I can’t believe how many profiles I see out there where it’s not been used properly. It’s another place for SEO juice, as it were, so please take advantage of it and give the link a relevant name!

5) Experience and Education Put your high school, college, university, and any business training or certification on there too. When writing your experience out, be sure to expand on the title and company, and avoid just highlighting your whole resume verbatim. It’s boring. Strike a happy balance between not telling too much and leaving it sparse.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Over the past decade, LinkedIn has become an essential personal branding tool. It has never been more important to build and maintain a stellar LinkedIn profile. The virtual professional network has morphed from an online resume and networking site to a comprehensive personal branding resource. Here are nine eye-opening reasons why you need to polish your LinkedIn profile right now!

1. It has millions of members. With over 225 million members, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. Today, it’s assumed that you have a LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have one, can you be taken seriously as a career-minded executive? Brand-conscious leaders don’t turn their backs on two hundred million prospects.2. It shows up at the top of Google searches. When someone googles you, your LinkedIn profile will likely show up in the first or second spot – that’s some powerful Google juice! This is important because, according to a Gravitate Online study of over 8 million clicks, more than 94% of users clicked on the first page results while fewer than 6% clicked to the second page. The first and second positions get 50% of all clicks. 3. People are researching you. All kinds of people use all kinds of ways to learn about you. LinkedIn gives you an opportunity to control what they discover about your strengths and, more important, about your brand. Who are these people? People you know. People who want to know you. People who matter: Your prospects, employees, manager, clients, competitors. They all use LinkedIn to learn about others. They search for you before meeting you for the first time, or after reading an article that you were featured in, or when deciding whether to respond to your email.

4. It’s packed with invaluable resources. LinkedIn helps you expand your success by offering crucial connections and expertise. Need to source staff? Want to solve problems that can’t be solved by the people in your company? Need to open doors with clients or partners? Need a service provider referral? Want to research what the competition is doing? Need to see who’s in a prospective client’s network? LinkedIn puts all of these assets at your fingertips.Reasons 5-9 and the complete Forbes article